Émile Zola The Masterpiece is the tragic story of Claude Lantier, an ambitious and talented young artist who has come from the provinces to conquer Paris but is conquered instead by the flaws of his own genius. Set in the 1860s and 1870s, it is the most autobiographical of the twenty novels in Zola's Rougon-Macquart series. It provides a unique insight into Zola's career as a writer and his relationship with Cezanne, a friend since their schooldays in Aix-en-Provence. It also presents a well-documented account of the turbulent Bohemian world in which the Impressionists came to prominence despite the conservatism of the Academy and the ridicule of the general public.

Émile Zola This is a love idyll concerning a poor embroideress, Angelique, and the son of a wealthy aristocratic family, set against the backdrop of a sleepy cathedral town in northern France.

Émile Zola & Ernest Alfred Vizetelly A companion edition to the TV series from Masterpiece on PBS

Through charm, drive, and diligent effort Octave Mouret has become the director of one of the finest new department stores in Paris, Au Bonheur des Dames. Supremely aware of the power of his position, Mouret seeks to exploit the desire that his luxuriantly displayed merchandise arouses in the ladies who shop, and the aspirations of the young female assistants he employs. Charting the beginnings of the capitalist economy and bourgeois society, Zola captures in lavish detail the greedy customers and gossiping staff, and the obsession with image, fashion, and gratification that was a phenomenon of nineteenth-century French consumer society. Of all Zola's novels, this may be the one with the most relevance for our own time.

Émile Zola Also known as Au Bonheur des Dames; The Ladies' Delight or The Ladies' Paradise; is the eleventh novel in the Rougon-Macquart series by Émile Zola. The novel is set in the world of the department store, an innovative development in mid-nineteenth century retail sales. Zola models his store after Le Bon Marché, which consolidated under one roof many of the goods hitherto sold in separate shops. In Au Bonheur des Dames, the store is a symbol of capitalism, the modern city and the bourgeois family. It is emblematic of changes in consumer culture, sexual attitudes and class relations taking place at the end of the century. The novel tells the story of Denise Baudu, a 20-year-old woman from Valognes who comes to Paris with her brothers and begins working at the department store Au Bonheur des Dames as a saleswoman. Zola describes the inner workings of the store from the employees' perspective, including the 13-hour workdays, the substandard food and the bare lodgings (for the female staff). Many of the conflicts in the novel spring from the struggles for advancement and the malicious infighting and gossip among the staff. Au Bonheur des Dames is a sequel to "Pot-Bouille". Like its predecessor, Au Bonheur des Dames focuses on Octave Mouret (b. 1840), who at the end of the previous novel married Caroline Hédouin, the owner of a small silk shop. Now a widower, Octave has expanded the business into an international retail powerhouse occupying (at the beginning of the book) most of an entire city block. Au Bonheur des Dames has been made into a number of films, television series and plays.

Émile Zola Capturing the atmosphere, sights and smells of mid-19th century Paris, Emile Zola’s The Belly of Paris sees the political prisoner Florent return to the French capital after escaping the notorious penal colony of Devil’s Island. But the Paris he returns too has changed beyond recognition and repulsed by the divide between rich and poor, he begins to think of revolution.

Émile Zola Doctor Pascal (orig. French Le Docteur Pascal) is the twentieth and final novel of the Rougon-Macquart series by Émile Zola, first published in June 1893 by Charpentier. The novel was translated into English by Ernest A. Vizetelly in 1894 (reprinted 1925 and 1995); by Mary J. Serrano in 1898 (reprinted 2005); and by Vladimir Kean in 1957. Zola's plan for the Rougon-Macquart novels was to show how heredity and environment worked on the members of one family over the course of the Second Empire. He wraps up his heredity theories in this novel. Le docteur Pascal is furthermore essentially a story about science versus faith.